What to do if your website gets deleted

Okay so here are a couple of points on how to retrieve a lost or deleted website. 

Restore from a server Backup

Hopefully [this should really go without saying] you have automated backups of your server, or your hosting provider does. Ask them to restore to the previous backup when your website wasn't deleted. Most hosting environments will be running daily backups which they will keep for a couple of weeks. 

Restore from your local files or development version

Most companies or web developers will be running a development branch of your website (if you are not developing yourself), ask them to restore from this.

Last resort go to the "Way Back When" website time machine

Yes, this website exsists, its amazing check it out Way Back When. I have been visiting for well over a decade now. This site has been a real help when looking back at revisions over the years. You can get a snapshot of your website and then restore a basic HTML version (just copy the source) of it until you can rebuild your full system: http://archive.org/web/

However be careful as the internet is vast and Way Back When only indexes parts of websites and sometimes not at all. If you need help copying and setting up a basic HTML website from archive.org drop us a line and we can get one up and running pretty quickly.

Future website disaster recovery

If you are reading this, and your website has been deleted or lost the next time you develop a site think about your disaster recovery. Apologies for sounding patronising, but this has to be considered for all websites as generally they are a very important business tool.

Here are a few tips on website disaster recovery for future projects:

1. Your Hosting company should run server backups
   Make sure your hosting company is running daily or at least weekly backups of your server or hosting environment.
2. Run your own backups -
   I would recommend doing this even if you are sure your hosting company or server is running an automated backup. Most Content Management Systems will have a manual backup feature - do this on a weekly basis at least. Most server operating systems have a backup facility, we tend to use PLESK and this has some amazing, and really easy to use, automated backup applications. Find out the ones for your server and start running them. Most servers will be running PLESK so have a look at PLESK's backup features in this video
3. Host a development website
   Run a development/clone website branch that you can restore from. Most developers will be developing in a GIT environment, ask them for a branch.
4. LAST RESORT:
   If you don't have access to either, you can submit your website to archive.org/ just look for the "Submit your website" link and hopefully achive.org will crawl and index your site

If you need hosting advice or are looking for a website hosting partner. We'd love to hear from you. We offer fully managed, dedicated IP, SSL encrypted, cloud hosting. And we always run the very latest PLESK operating system. Please get in touch if you have any questions.